For those of you STILL patiently waiting for Book Two...

Geography is part of the reason it's not done yet. Scott and I haven't lived close enough to each other to work efficiently for, oh, about five years now. You knew that part. Another reason is that when we do connect on-line and manage to get some work time together in, we degenerate to things like this (lightly edited to remove spoilers):

SC: Maybe the real prophesy was the mortals rising up and taking back what was once theirs

EJ: Um, ok.

SC: Dragons in fantasy were always considered the dominant force that everyone feared and respected.

EJ: Oh well yeah! Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy with a gooey center

SC: Maybe long ago Dragons banded together to lead all in the belief that they should rule.

SC: Maybe that’s why the dragons of this realm stay in the mortal disguise so often

EJ: Our rationale for that was so they wouldn't scare the peasants

SC: Sure it was and maybe that’s the reason for our dragons but what about the others

SC: Why did Malitor do it or Vaytawn or Justus

EJ: sooo they don't scare the peasants

EJ: also to avoid being hunted by hysterical peasants

SC: To show their strength even when they looked weak

SC: A power trip of sorts

SC: Dragons would not worry about the hunting of the peasants

EJ: enough peasants with enough pitchforks at the right time could ruin a dragon's day

EJ: never underestimate the power of hysterical peasants with pitchforks

SC: lol

Uh huh. We call that work and wonder why the daggone book still isn't done. On the bright side, he did promise to have a Word Document in my e-mail by Sunday evening so we can chat again Monday evening. He's going to work out an alternate ending (changing his mind about the radical original ending, which was his idea, and which I've already written), which means I'll have to re-write the prophesy. I see lots of re-writing in my future, but I'm willing to do it if it makes the book better. I've done it before. Never mind that I'll be effectively re-writing two books because the current ending is also written from Sieger's viewpoint in Rogue Pawn, and if we change it, I'll be changing about a third of that book, too.

I have threatened him with bodily harm and Ing Fu if the document is not in my Inbox by Sunday evening. I'm swamped with church-related activities all weekend, so I won't get any writing in anyway. I'm content to let him do all the work for a few days. Long distance relationships suck.

Angst

I have had a series of conversations with Scott and Eric about writing lately. I won't go into all the boring details; the gist is that I realized that both Scott and I are letting life get in the way of the dream. A few years ago we were focussed on writing, and on making a living with it. We wanted our names on the NYT Best Seller List. I wanted to be the first Science Fiction author to make Oprah's Book Club. In the last few years, for various reasons, we've lost that.

I called Scott on it last week, and we've been trying to coordinate schedules so that we could (gasp!) finish the sequel to The Dragon's Lady. Scott is fired up about it. I, on the other hand, hate everything on my hard drive. Seriously, I'm about ready to kill every character in every book in every genre and be done with it.

It's a phase. I know it is. I read enough writers' blogs to know that this is a natural progression. It's the second book block, compounded by the fact that there are two of us birthing it simultaneously. If I can just figure out how to get the hunger back I'll be all right. I just can't put my finger on what is so different now, other than the fact that I've lived in three different houses in two countries since we finished The Dragon's Lady. My kids are older, and I'm only homeschooling one. That should make my life easier, right? I don't have the money worries that I did before; that should take pressure off, not put it on. I'm not writing in the dining room; I have my own computer in my own space, and when I'm at my desk everyone (except the cats) knows to leave me alone. Is it the cats? Could it be that Charcoal was my muse? He knew the sound of the keyboard and would come to sit in my lap and try to nurse on my sleeve. Can't do much about that. If I could bring him back, I'd have done it long ago.

I don't know. Thoughts and ideas would be appreciated at this point. All I can think to do now is take my wine glass upstairs and read. Yeah, that's productive. *snort*

Hmm. OK

I'd like to say I'm resting my case from yesterday, but I can't. It's too strange to be apples and oranges; more like bananas and pomegranites. I'm glad I'm not Iranian. (I'm sure the average Iranian woman is glad not to be American, so it all works out in the end.) I get confused enough without the news media changing words for things in an attempt to weed out 'foreign' words.

I have the first of a series of Dudleys Rush gigs today. This one is at a winery about half an hour from here, and they're feeding us, so it should be fun, even if it is a long day and we don't really know what's going on. The coordinators told us we needed to do a 20-25 minute set, so that's what we planned for. The local newspaper did an article on Thursday which said that Dudleys Rush will take the stage for an hour at 4:00. The good news is that we've been working on a few other things for the other upcoming gigs, so we could probably cobble together an hour set. Then again, they're doing a wine tasting before the show. We could do our 20-minute set three times through and probably no one will know the difference!

I love Bluegrass!